Xuan Chau Noon - feelings at the foot of the waves
(Baonghean.vn) - It was a sunny afternoon. But the wind was strong. The wind blew white waves crashing onto the sandy shore, rustling on the rows of casuarinas that shaded the shady huts that were built to welcome tourists who had begun to know the pristine beach with delicious and cheap seafood. The small village of Xuan Chau nestled on the shore of Dien Kim, the asphalt road next to
Mother of 7 children
She is Hoang Thi Tan, born in 1975. On the path leading to the sea that afternoon, she was hurriedly pushing a cart, on which were her two little children. Today, this was the fifth trip she had pushed the cart to the sea. The first trip was at 2am, she brought a torch, fishing net, lunch box and other seafaring supplies to see her husband off to sea. The second, third and fourth trips were when her husband's younger brothers' boats returned to the shore, she went out to help. And this trip, at 1pm, was when her husband returned. Tan dropped her children off at the beach, the children rushed out to their grandmother, the uncles and their siblings had been on the beach since the first boat in that big family returned. Tan hurriedly pushed the cart to the water's edge, pulling her husband's boat and the heavy net ashore. She moved her husband’s gear onto the cart and asked loudly, as if to drown out the sound of the waves: “Dad is the latest to come home this summer. Did you catch any fish?” The question was just a greeting, she didn’t need an answer from her husband who was busy arranging the net. When the boat, or rather the simple raft made of bamboo and reeds of her family, was safely placed on the beach with a long row of other rafts of Xuan Chau fishermen, she leisurely looked at us with a sunburnt smile.
